Alien Like You
by StrangerThanYouDreamtIt
Summary: A whole world away from the world I know, I feel like I'm home.


**Author's Note:** This was inspired by the song 'Alien Like You' by The Pigott Brothers. I had intended to quote it at the beginning, but found that few parts weren't relevant. So, if you care to, take a listen to the song in its entirety. Also, for the sake of this story, we're going to pretend that that little conversation between Emily and JJ on their flight to Paris didn't take place (the one in '200' regarding JJ's backstop). Or, at least, not as directly as it did in the show. Aside from that, everything else is the same.

**Author's Note 2: **My fluency with the French language extends only to the translation for 'yes', 'thank you', and – for some inane reason – 'apple'. Thus, I'm choosing to trust Google when it tells me that bandage/bandages is 'bandage'. If I'm wrong, I apologize. And, actually, if I am wrong (and you know what it should be) tell me and I'll change it.

* * *

**Alien Like You**

Beyond the porthole-esque window to my left, a burst of bright white is flooding the horizon. The East: the point from which both light and darkness are born. Back in the cabin, with her head in my lap, the physical embodiment of that sunrise is sleeping.

She makes me think of those hours that linger between midnight and dawn: a facet of the world that we're not supposed to see. I don't think I'm supposed to see her. I don't think I'm supposed to know that every minute flutter of her eyes, every unconscious gasp that leaves her lips represents a monster without a name. I'm not supposed to know because she doesn't realize that I _do_, and just how do I tell her that those secrets she buries are my secrets too? Is that not similar to viewing the world when it isn't ready for human eyes?

For two hours before she finally allowed herself to sleep, she described to me her time with Ian Doyle. And just like the world offers us the sunrise to discourage any absurd notion that it was ever anything but beautiful, she perfectly articulated her narrative to deflect any chance of me recognizing that there are parts of her that hail from a world which surpasses any nightmares the imagination could concoct. But I've been to that world. I, like her, half-reside in that world every single day.

Because of that, I wasn't simply hearing the words, but actually feeling them in a way that is only possible when a person knows of that which cannot be expressed with the English language alone. Some things can't be explained. The fact that she did, and so directly too, tells me she was utilizing all that words lack to her advantage. Words are just accumulated letters. She's safe behind them. But, if she knew that I too spend each day hiding behind them, would she ever have spoken so freely?

Knowing Emily, it's doubtful. So I'll pretend that I don't know her. I'll pretend that I don't know her more than anyone has ever known her, and when the time comes, I'll be on my way. I'll keep my secret, and I'll let her keep hers. In less than twenty-four hours, at some Parisian café - a place where no one knows our name; a place where I'm forced to forget hers - I'll leave her with everything necessary to start a new life, and withhold that which, should I ever offer it, would create a world far more tumultuous than the one that's haunting her dreams right now. Because the time for honesty has passed. The playing field is already far too uneven for it to ever be levelled with simple honesty.

When we arrive at the hotel, there's an expression in her eyes that I've never seen before. She looks child-like and lost, an alien in a world she doesn't know. I realize then that she doesn't. In that exact instance, she has no clue who she is, or who she's supposed to be. Is she Lauren Reynolds? Is she Emily Prentiss? Soon enough, she'll be the name concealed within a grey envelope – the person I'll never meet. For right now, she's a blank canvas.

"You should take a bath," I suggest, the only option I have to me to encourage her out of the hall in which she's been stood for the past minute.

She doesn't trust herself in this world, because she doesn't know herself in this world. Does this version of her have the same defenses and barriers that the DC version of her does? Or if I were to pull her into my arms right now, would she sob into my chest and beg me to take her _home_? I'm certain the latter is true, which is the very reason I can't do such a thing. I'm not sure DC Emily would ever forgive me for allowing her to be so vulnerable.

As she disappears into the bathroom, I head down to reception. I know she isn't going to eat, because I doubt I am either, but I'll overcompensate with food nonetheless. I'm not the reason she's here, but I can't help but feel that I _am_ the reason she can't be there. It's unrealistic guilt, I know that. I didn't make her nightmare return; I didn't make her nightmare chase her into hiding. I'm not the reason that she "never made it off the table" and I'm not the reason that she can't go home… But I am. I'm the reason for all of that, because unlike anybody else, unlike the rest of the team, I _get_ it. I know she's hurting. I know why she's hurting. By default, doesn't the responsibility to fix it fall to my shoulders?

Unfortunately, because I know those things, I also know the necessity of this secret that she has to keep – this secret that she, essentially, is. Therefore, the last thing I can do right now is _fix_ it. All I can do is stick a Band-Aid over the wound and lie to her and tell her, _eventually, it'll stop hurting_.

With a little hindrance from the language barrier, I manage to order bagels and coffee to be brought to the room in time for her to finish in the bathroom, and head to the gift shop in the lobby in search of bandages. The hospital provided her with several, all of which were utilized when her stitches split on the flight. She didn't let me assist, of course. I imagine she sees them as self-inflicted injuries; wounds created by her own hand rather than the monster that has tormented her for years.

"Bandage?" I ask as I approach the counter, partially unsure why I know that the correct translation for bandage is pretty much bandage, with a little French flare. Thank Christ Emily is more fluent in the language than I.

The assistant responds with something that I, of course, don't understand and, thankfully, escorts me over to where I'll find bandages and other medical supplies. I grab three packages, along with pain reliever and something that, in a situation where my options are incredibly limited, seems like a savior. Or, perhaps, Emily's savior.

When I return to the room, I find that breakfast beat me to it. Emily, her hair damp and unkempt, is perched upon the end of the bed, staring at the food-stacked silver tray like she's trying to figure out what she's supposed to do with it. I know that, actually, she's simply attempting to locate an appetite so as not to worry or offend me.

"I'll eat a bagel if you do," I smile, dropping the small bag of items I just purchased to the table.

"I'll split one with you," She responds, the first words she's spoken in hours, and the small glint of humanity in her eyes causes my heart to both soar and break. God, I wish I could take her home. God, I wish I could take away her pain.

As we eat our half-bagels in silence, I find myself wondering if this is what it was like for her the last time that she had to erase herself. And with that pondering, comes a further question that takes my breath away. Was she alone the last time? I realize the situations are vastly different, but not different enough for the query to become invalid. Because she had an organization behind her, but, in the midst of losing herself, what did she have _beside_ her to anchor her to reality?

My eyes drift to hers of their own accord, as if I'm preparing to verbalize such queries and the devastation I feel for the chance that the answer might be: _Nothing, no one._ But when my peripherals catch the stark contrast of crimson pooling against her white robe, my priorities shift. Taking the bagel that she's really only picking at now from her hand, I replace it to the tray, and crouch so that my arms are rested either side of her against the bed and I'm looking up at her. It wasn't purposely done, but I'm happy with the way that the positioning, in profiler terms, gives her the power.

"Will you allow me to change your bandages?" Without permission, the fingers of my left hand seek out hers and curl around them, and she eventually, cautiously, nods. "Are you wearing anything beneath your robe?"

"Panties. It took all of my strength to shower and I couldn't…" She drops her eyes, and her jaw locks as her voice lowers to something almost robotic. "I couldn't manage anything else by myself."

I'm not oblivious to the fact that those words were very definitely the most difficult ones she has ever had to say. If Emily hates anything, it's being defenseless. I need her to know that she isn't defenseless with me. I need her to know that, for as long as she'll allow it, I _am_ her defenses.

Certain she likely doesn't relish the idea of being more exposed to me than she already is, I offer her a way to protect her modesty. "I'm going to grab something comfy from your bag. I'll help out as much as you're comfortable with, and then allow you to do the rest. Is that okay?"

She nods, again with clear hesitance, and I do as I explained: locate sweats in the one suitcase she brought with her, and then slip them on over her legs and glide them up as far as her thighs. I stop, looking to her for direction, and she responds by reaching down, her fingers grazing mine before she, with some struggle, shifts her pants up fully. Something tells me that that small amount of pain she felt with the movement was nullified by the fact that, in a situation where she's been stripped of everything, she was able to do something for herself.

"I'm going to need to be able to access your abdomen," I realize out loud, and then realize that I have no clear method as to how I should or could do that without her being exposed to me in some way. Thankfully, she remedies the predicament for me.

"I can hold up my robe. I think that'll be less painful than attempting to dress or put on a bra." There's a small, belying smile on her lips, and I know the pain she's speaking of isn't of the physical, but of the psychological pain of having to maneuver through that awkward situation when she's already feeling vulnerable.

"That works." I squeeze her hand, and then push myself to my feet and head to the bathroom for a washcloth to clean away the excess blood.

When I return, I grab the bag I left on the table and pull up a chair in front of her. As she lifts her robe, I can see it's pushing the limits of her pain threshold, and I have to place more than mild effort into banishing the certainty that this would be a whole lot easier if she wasn't wearing it at all. I can't let her be in agony the whole time I'm changing her bandages, but I realize that, either way, she's going to be in some form of pain. I need to make this quick.

As I clean away the blood pooling down the lower portion of her torso and her injury is gradually revealed to me, I find myself surprised at how small it is. What startles me more is that I'm angry towards this realization. I'd imagined, considering everything that preceded and followed its creation, that it would be a huge gaping wound. It's not. It's a thin line, almost two inches long, and in all its seemingly insignificant glory, I irrationally feel like it's mocking her, invalidating her suffering. If I know her like I think I do, she feels the same animosity towards it.

"When my sister died, I found myself needing to understand." I begin, and keep my eyes fixed on the task at hand as I talk. I can't tell her my current secret, but I can tell her this one. "I cut in the same spot for weeks. It'd heal, and then I'd reopen it, worse than before. But no matter how deep I cut, the wound just never seemed significant enough to offer me what I was searching for. Which was reason. I needed a definitive reason for the huge, inexplicable hole suddenly present in my life."

"Where did you do it?" She asks, and I pause to smile up at her. Anyone else would have asked something weighty. Anyone else would have displayed alarm for the fact that, apparently, I have self-harm in my history. But Emily Prentiss wants to know, simply, _where_.

"My upper left thigh," I answer as I toss the now-red washcloth to the table behind me and reach for the fresh bandages.

Behind my every move, is an inordinate amount of mental strength, a silent pep-talk: _You've got this. She needs you. You've __**got**__ this_. But there was so much blood… Is there supposed to be that much blood? I'm apparently talented enough to be dropped in a war zone by the American Government, to be entrusted with an international secret… But I'm not sure I'm qualified for _this_. For _any_ of this. How can I tell her everything is going to be just fine when _I_ don't even believe it?

"Do you have a scar?"

I pause again… and then let my arms fall either side of her once more and give her my undivided attention. What she's really asking me is how I deal with having that scar. Furthermore, how is _she_ going to deal with the fact that somehow, somehow, this seemingly minor wound on her torso is, when healed, going to seem far grander than it does right now? It's going to be a story that, on more than one occasion and without fully understanding the narrative herself, she'll either have to tell, dispel, or avoid entirely. Knowing how much she keeps the world at arm's length already, I can't allow this scar to be further reason that she pushes people away.

"I do, and I've had to explain it a couple of times." I respond, and swallow as I carefully ponder my next words. "When I was younger, I'd get creative with the explanations. Now, when asked what happened, I tell them life happened, and let them take it however they wish to."

"_Life happened_." She repeats, as if practicing the words. "I like that."

"It is yours to keep," I smile, and draw my attention back to redressing her wounds.

As soon as I've laid the final piece of tape that I'm hopeful will keep her bandaged for more than an hour, she drops her robe and lets out a breath - the first real indication of the pain she's been withholding for the past five minutes. I pretend I didn't hear, and clean away the blooded towels and used bandages. Eventually, she's going to have to allow me to help her change into something else. She's likely already aware of this, so, for now, I'll leave her be.

"What are these for?" I hear her ask, and I turn with a frown to find her holding up a plastic package containing a comb, scissors and several hair grips.

When I'd purchased them, I'd had hope. Now, looking at her in this utterly fragmented form, I'm certain my logic is flawed. How is a haircut going to remedy the fact that, little more than fourteen hours ago, she had to leave herself and everything she loves behind in an OR? "I thought…" I sigh, and perch myself on the bed beside her. "I thought it might help."

For several moments, she stares at the package almost longingly, searching; and I suddenly feel like more of a perpetrator to this whole situation. In a gesture that I'd hoped would help her to locate herself, have I actually just further encouraged erasing herself? Have I just made those thousands of miles between here and the world she loves a distance _too_ unbearable?

Finally, she looks to me, a smile curling at her lips. "Are you going to make me look like a stray dog?"

_The stray dog that I apparently now am_, are the words she purposely leaves out. "Only if that's the look you wish for." I grin, and then, after a moment, reduce and strengthen my expression to something more sincere. "Whatever you want."

Fortunately for my limited hairdressing skills, she simply requests to "look different". Of course she would, because anything is better than the nothing she feels like she is right now. As soon as this haircut is complete, she will have one piece to her new identity puzzle and, consequently, one piece of sanity. I know that's how she'll get through this: by treating it like a puzzle. She has to collect the pieces, and then once she has them all, she can return home. Of course, I know – we know – that Ian Doyle is one of those pieces, probably the most vital, and until he's been located, the puzzle will never be complete. Until he's located – _her_ version of the reason I searched for in my younger years – she'll struggle to keep ahold of her sanity.

But she will, because whether she's Lauren or Emily or a name in an envelope, she's still stronger than she's ever believed herself to be. And whether she's able to see it right now, through the dense fog that has engulfed her life, she's going to come back from this something grander, wiser, more beautiful than she's ever believed herself to be. There's beauty in darkness – I hope she locates _that_ piece of the puzzle on her travels.

"How did you know this would help?" She asks quietly as I begin neatening up the left side of her hair, and I rest my hand against her shoulder and meet her eyes in our reflection.

_Because I wish every day that I could find myself in recreation._ "It's what people do, isn't it? When something big happens, they get a haircut."

She appraises me for the longest time, unnerving enough, but when she asks- "Did _you_ get a haircut?" –my heart stops.

With her stare alone, she's telling me exactly what I hadn't considered: her profiling skills are second to none. There's nothing she doesn't know about reading people, because for as long as she can remember, that knowledge has been the one thing that's kept her safe. Because of that, there's nothing she doesn't know about _me_ – including that secret I was so certain I had to keep from her.

And yet, when she speaks again- "When you lost your sister, I mean." -I find she's granting me the pretense I've been operating under since we boarded the plane twelve hours ago.

As she - an almost mirror-image, an eerie vision of my temporarily-brunette self - stares back at me, straight through me, I respond solidly. "I colored it." I'll never know for sure what she was really asking, and she'll never know for sure what I was really replying to. But that's fine; that's enough.

I learn in that moment that there's a world that exists, one beyond labels and definition, where life just is and relationships just are. I've never been able to pinpoint what she is to me, and here I don't need to. I've struggled, in recent months, just like her, to pinpoint who I am. Here, we don't need to. Because, in this room that is essentially limbo, where we're not Emily and JJ but just two ghosts without histories or futures, the secret we share is allowed to just _be_. It doesn't need to be discussed. Similarly, and more importantly, it doesn't need to be avoided.

And even in that moment I know that _because_ this room once existed, because _we_ once existed in this otherworldly form, the secret we'll continue to carry when we leave won't feel quite so heavy. Because for a moment, we weren't two people carrying two separate burdens, but two people carrying one; and for that moment, we were bigger than life, bigger than reality, bigger than the shadows that weigh down our every step. For _one moment_, we were something ethereal, and for _one moment_, it was perfectly fine that it defies all explanation.

With a deep breath, a reconciliation with the ghost in the mirror, I avert my gaze. "I think you're done." Pursing my lips to rid her of the loose hair from the back of her neck, it takes me a second to realize that, throughout that process of blowing air against her flesh, her darkened eyes were, unambiguously, watching me. She's finding herself. The woman curled up in my lap on a plane four hours ago would never have been so bold, and I take the opportunity to remedy an earlier predicament. "You're going to have to allow me to help you change your robe. It's covered in blood…"

"I know." She responds unwaveringly, her eyes still secured on mine through our reflection. "So change it."

I hadn't expected her to be quite so permitting. More than that, I hadn't truly considered the implications for myself in assisting her in this way. Like she earlier, I now find myself in a place where I don't trust myself, because of the fact that it's a place I don't know. Emily sans clothing is unknown territory, and I'm not too proud to admit that there are similar feelings within me right now as there were three months ago when I unexpectedly found myself touching down in an Afghan desert.

Blinking away my reservations – if she can do this, I sure as hell can - I drop my eyes and move to grab a shirt from her bag. With her hair that way, with her confidence returning, with her words so solid and her eyes so dark… I can almost see Emily. And I can't allow myself that, because as we're both very aware, she can't _be_ Emily. For the first time, with my back to her, I find tears pooling at my eyes for the fact that, soon enough, for what could be forever, I'll have to say goodbye. I'll have to let her go. I'll have to walk away. My god… how am I going to _walk away_?

I swallow back my sudden emotion, hoping it enough to fill the familiar black hole forming in my chest, and keep my eyes diverted from hers as I step in front of her. Presented with a now-darkened patch of red, my hands freeze but my eyes lift to hers like they've always done when I find myself lost and wandering, and just like she always has, she guides me. With her eyes fixed on mine, soothing and safe, she takes my hands and shifts them to the opening of her robe, where she then encourages me to push apart the material. Peripherals aside, I can't see her naked torso, only the dark eyes staring back at me, but my breath spills from my lips, shaky and telling.

We're crossing over dimensions right now, I know. The real world is merely an echo, a distraction that my mind swats away like a fly as I follow her into a land even beyond that one I found myself marveling in just five minutes ago. I'm lost to the temptation, with only her hand to guide me… But I don't _feel_ lost I, for the first time in so long, feel free. Free of burden and free of uncertainty.

When her hands leave mine, only briefly enough to fully relinquish herself of her robe and allow me to slip her shirt over her head, I feel like I'm falling through the universe, plummeting through the atmosphere and wishing it would burn me up just so I could feel anything but the drop…

And then she catches me. As I shift her t-shirt over the final exposed inches of her abdomen, she catches me; not with her hands, but with her lips. Those beautiful lips that, eight hours ago, created beautiful words to convince me of that which I've always known: that she, whether at 4am or sunrise, is beautiful. That perhaps she is, at 4am, her _most_ beautiful.

Within that kiss, within the taste of her lips and the scent of her skin, the real world slips away entirely. Not even an echo, not even a distraction: it no longer exists. Only the world that only she and I know exists, and in that isolation, devoid of all else, _we_ exist. We are something more than the secrets we carry each day. We are _every_ secret. We are all that secrecy comprises of, and yet… relinquished of such responsibility. A whole world away from the world I know, I feel like I'm home.

She pulls back slightly, and my mouth follows her; an instinctive response to what I'm certain is devastation. But in perfect time with that loss of her lips, I feel her thumb, feather-like and trembling, graze over the upper portion of my left thigh. A silent message: _life happened_. And in response to those words that are far too profound for sound to have ever done them justice, I press my hand to her heart, directly to the right of the four-leaved clover that brands her breast. _Life happened_.

It is the first and only time that I will _ever_ feel this, I know. A moment this intense, this fragile, this honest could never exist in the real world - it has no place there. It belongs here, in limbo, in _secret_. And yet I can't help but take it with me when we leave that room. Though I know that my mind could never recreate or keep ahold of it in its truest form, that its purity began to evaporate in the very moment that it became a point in history than an anchor to the present, I'll carry it like a security blanket; even when it's frayed at the edges and barely resembles what it once was.

It is what will forever provide reason to that which is devoid of all reason and logic. It is what, with a Parisian backdrop setting the scene, allows me to remain in the role I'm forced to play, when all I want to do is change the narrative. It is what, as she takes three steps away from me and turns back, tells me that no matter what can and cannot exist in the real world, I will forever, while walking through a crowd of realities that don't make sense, be waiting for a ghost I once knew to tap me on the shoulder and tell me, _let's go home_.

"Who am I this time?" She asks, her eyes struggling or refusing to budge from the sidewalk. Five words. Five words like arrows, direct from her heart and into mine.

"I don't know." I respond solemnly and gravitate towards her. When I press my hand to her cheek, she leans into the touch. "But to me, you're 4am. To me, you'll always be as beautiful as 4am."

She finally looks at me; looks at me like she gets the meaning, though I know she doesn't. She couldn't possibly. They're only words, remember?

With a lingering kiss to my palm, a silent goodbye, she turns and walks out of my life; and I take comfort from the fact that, somehow, _Emily_ is left in her wake: An integral piece to _my_ puzzle; a secret to carry me; a ghost I'll always search for in my dreams.


End file.
